Blood is not always thicker than water:The limited effect of kin selection on human kinship in the traditional Chinese family

摘要

To examine the importance of kin selection in shaping human societies, this study analyzed the kinship system practicedin traditional China for two millennia and teased apart its underlying genetic and other, presumably cultural, components.The results demonstrate that, in the traditional patrilineal Chinese family, both genetic relatedness and the cultural factor of generationwere important in determining kinship status for male agnates (genetically related relatives). For female agnates, however,only genetic relatedness was important. Another surprising finding was that the influence of gender was not as important asgenetic relatedness. The most interesting finding in this study, however, was that kin selection and culture (i.e., seniority in generationand age) played vastly different roles in different lineages in the Chinese family: for collateral (indirect) agnates, geneticrelatedness was the most important factor in determining their kinship status, but for lineal (direct) agnates, its importance wasoverridden by seniority in generation and age, a cultural factor. Several other bio-cultural factors also explained a considerableamount of variance in kinship status. Since kinship profoundly affected, and was often the foundation of, the legal and social systemsin dynastic China, kin selection, while its strength may differ remarkably between lineal and collateral relatives, could act asa selective force in Chinese